Map of the Problematique
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: A case running out of time. An officer determined to find the culprit before someone else dies. Components failing on themselves, overheating, malfunctioning. In the middle of this, Connor, DPD agent staring at a board, android in a dire need for a response.


There are three-hundred-and-five days in a year split in fifty-two weeks, twenty-four hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute. These are facts in any normal and given situation, it's routine and daily ideas most people, if not everyone, is aware of.

And yet he's running out of it.

He's running out of _time_.

A tense case revolving around a serial killer seeking revenge. The main suspect of it used to be a red ice dealer arrested back in 2028 by a brilliant and exceptionally young lieutenant: he's now a killer on the chase, that is for sure. Detective Gavin ""that fucking asshole"" Reed put that in question once, perhaps just to spite with workmates he does not like, but he was still shut down in the end.

The thing is, there is no time. The man (they presume it's a man: they are sure it's this former dealer) is on the chase and "killing everything this fuckin' bastard can lay his hands on" according to Hank's flowery way to say things out with his heart. They finally have a suspect, but… it's starting to be tiring, to put in a human way.

Most detectives in the DPD have been affected to this case to guarantee the safety of what seems to be every single figure resembling a cop, former or active, in Detroit. The culprit seems to enact revenge for what happened ten years ago. The victims were all either shot or stabbed, some of them just left for dead and others who died on the spot. The witnesses did not remember their assaulter enough to be able to provide a portrait: they just knew it was nobody they had known before, except in news reports from years ago.

The killer is impossible to pin down at the moment. His modus operandi changes all the time. It is as if he manages to teleport every time a crime committed happens. Police is starting to get tremendously annoyed, if not angered, by the person always escaping from them.

All hands meant human and android alike. Staring at the interactive board with all evidence lined in front of him, it is undeniable: Connor is as lost as everyone else because it just seems like a problem impossible to solve, something his algorithms and coding cannot give a response to.

An Error 404 is still not what is needed from him and from everyone else, so he just stands in front of the board again and tries to link everything again. For the tenth time in an hour or so. His sensors are starting to have the pictures burnt into them.

He looks over and over again over the evidence. Pictures of corpses, sample and analysis results, maps of the city with red and blue crosses over them, photos of the few weapons found with no fingerprints on them, components of bullets, bullet lists, notes all over the screen. He feels like there is an obvious link between all these murders, all these victims had to have something in common in some point.

However, they're all coming from various backgrounds. They have nothing in common: gender, race, age, occupation, blood colour… It's as if the murderer was just going on sprees every day and attacking whoever he wants to. That can't be the case, so Connor shifts his attention back to square one with added hypotheses and more information coming from other officers.

It's seven in the morning when he thinks he has a breakthrough. The crimes are always happening in the vicinity of authority-related buildings: the police station, the prisons, perhaps the hospital. The murders happen mostly around the first building, which is a given considering the background of past dealer and vengeance ideas they have determined the killer to have developed over the years.

The crimes are also going in the movement of waves, getting closer and further from their current location in cycles. His calculations indicate the waves are heading for the "shore": their chance to strike is soon, barely feet away from—

 **WARNING: CRITICALLY LOW ENERGY LEVEL**

 **REST MODE ACTIVATION IN: 00:34:05**

These warnings keep appearing in his visual sensors, to the point he has almost lost track of the count in what seems to be hours ago. It's been five times, five times he's overridden these to accomplish his mission. They're for his good, his basic functioning even, but he doesn't have time for these.

He's not very happy about overriding these for that reason. Even if he does—

 **WARNING: RISING INTERNAL TEMPERATURE**

 **CRITICALLY LOW ENERGY LEVEL**

 **REST MODE ACTIVATION IN: 00:24:45**

In overheat, overexertion and what humans would describe as "exhaustion" and "overwork", it's getting harder and harder to ignore these signs. His LED is flashing yellow at all times now, shifting to red whenever he overrides a message kindly telling him to slip into his rest mode. Clutching onto the case, working for two days straight or so, he activates his most extreme stamina mode.

Shutting down blinking and other miscellaneous unvital functions, letting his vision dim slightly and his hearing lower in quality, he feels more like a machine than ever. Breathing is out of the question: if he deactivates it, his components will heat up even more. He cannot go from bad to worse now.

Footsteps enter the room as he writes down some of the ideas he has gotten. The tide is something the other detectives need to know about even if it—

 **WARNING: CRITICALLY LOW ENERGY LEVEL**

 **STAMINA+ MODE ACTIVATED**

 **REST MODE ACTIVATION IN: -:-:-**

His LED doesn't flash back yellow once he's done removing this message. He shuts down the calculator for his own statistics: they're miserable anyway, there's no need to know more than the fact he should be resting already.

The mission is still a top priority, because the battery of an android is still less important than the lives of potentially dozens of people, humans and androids alike, no matter how deviant or "conscious" he is. It's just less important.

"Jesus Christ!" Hank's voice resonates in the room as his footsteps get louder. "I told ya to go to sleep hours ago, Connor!"

He barely shifts his head to the lieutenant, afraid a second may slip away from his grasp.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. May I remind you androids do not sleep."

"You gotta be shittin' me… That's all ya have to say?! You've been there for God knows how long!"

"I'm very close to a breakthrough, Lieutenant." His voice box sounds strained too, mostly due to the exhaustion his components have taken. Stamina mode reduces the efficiency of it: more reasons not to speak with Hank and lose time. "I can't give up now."

"You even sound like shit!" The lieutenant shakes his head in disbelief. "You're not just a machine anymore, so go rest before I see ya fuckin' collapse in front of me!"

Androids don't collapse, Hank. They enter prolonged rest mode or shut down, but they don't "collapse". No time to tell him this: perhaps Connor should also turn off random thoughts while he's at it.

Hank stands next to him, looking at the board.

"So, what have you found since Gavin's gone to bed, Connor?"

Taking his best calm, reasoned and not-exhausted voice, the android stops waving his hands away to recapitulate everything. Can't do him any wrong anyway, can't it?

"The killer seems to do wave-like movements near the police station and related buildings. He then assaults various persons related to officers with unlinked weapons, always changing in bullet types and blades. It also seems that he's getting close to the station again, making it a good opportunity to strike soon."

There's a pat on his shoulder.

"Good job, kid. Now go to bed, 'kay? Ya've done enough for a whole week."

"Just… a couple minutes more. I've yet to tell everyone else."

Then Hank sighed before grumbling.

"Goddammit, I can do that y'know! Fine, do it."

"Thank you."

 **WARNING: ELEVATED INTERNAL TEMPERATURE**

 **CRITICALLY LOW ENERGY LEVEL**

 **COMPONENTS OVERHEATING**

Yet again brushing aside all of these warnings, disregarding the threat to his own systems, he focused on the tide. The culprit was about to go down: he had to act. Stamina Mode wouldn't deactivate his ability to send cybernetic messages for the few next minutes. It was the chance of the past month, the chance of multiple lives he lacked the energy to calculate the number of. Hands trembling from Thirium getting pumped to his vital biocomponents, he puts together the last strings.

The culprit would come back around the police station in less than half an hour, before most people would be in the streets but where they'd still be enough persons to kill. Writing that down on the board, he ignores Hank's words to him, no matter how angry they sound. He just doesn't have the time to listen. Sending a last message to the main forces, warning everyone, he almost lets himself take a breath, a real one to cool everything down.

Gyroscope unbalanced, he stumbles upon his own feet, vision swimming in buffering jitters, until someone catches him in their arms. There is a short silence before he switches priorities, shifting importance to voice box and hearing instead of cybernetic communication and…

Is he really paying attention anymore? Everything is powering down anyway. He won't be able to be "awake" for too long, so he better use this time well.

Hearing other officers head outside, repeating information on the main culprit, a slight smile appears on his lips.

"What makes you grin like that, huh?!" Hank's voice screams through the room, dragging him outside and away from the evidence all lined up in complete asymmetry and rushed developments.

"I think we've caught the culprit, Lieutenant…"

"It's Hank for ya, kid."

He was too overexerted to correct himself in a repeat of his words.

"Where are we going…?"

"Home. Ya've done too much work already. And don't fuckin' question me."

"O… okay…"

Out of the blue, visual feed completely cut out. His eyes shut down on their own and there was no power left to open them.

"Damn, you really overdid it, didn't cha? It's time for ya to go to bed. I'm taking ya home."

Yet, the lieutenant wasn't entirely finished as they made their way to his car.

"You're burning, geez! That's normal or what?"

"Component overheating… Bound to happen if any android functions for that long without a break…"

"Means you gotta not overdo it, son. Nothing more and nothing less. Got it?"

"Got it…"

As they left the station and got into the car, all "senses" blurring, he could hear one last thing.

"You've done well, though. Get that rest, you deserve it."


End file.
